Jewish Tragedy

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

Jewish Tragedy

PROBABLY it is only symptomatic of the Jewish problem in modern Europe (hat Jewish literature to-day should provide a field of greater and more varied activity than for many years past. Some modern Jewish writing, as a result,, is deliberate propaganda, although even this is skilfully devised, but on the other hand there are writers both in English and in Yiddish who are literary artists before they are propagandists and who arc finding in the.struggles of their race material of vital and compelling strength. Such a writer is I J. Singer, whoso latest novel, "East of Eden," has been magnificently translated from the Yiddish by Maurice Samuel. Singer's reputation among English readers is soundly based on his vast and sweeping story, "The Brothers Ashkenazi," and it does not suffer in tho least from his latest work.

Powerful Novel of Revolution By O.S.H.

"East of Eden" i's tho story of a young Jew, the son of a poor .Jewish pedlar from a .Polish village, who endeavours to shape his life 1o fit a simple but. tragic idealism. Through it all there is tho acrid wlidf of revolution in Warsaw and in Moscow and tlx; hook is peopled with wretched folk who despairingly watch the exchange of one form of tyranny for another. As a literary student of the Jewish position in tlie European maelstrom, I. J. Singer has much in common with another great Yiddish writer, Sholcni A sell. His methods certainly are different, ior lie does not command the broad strokes which A sell employed so powerfully in "Three Cities," but rather paints his word picture in a series of impressionistic scenes. However, tho book is equally revealing of the power of the Jewish faith and tho hold that it exerts on simple Jewish people even in days ot racial insanity. It is a human document a long way before it is a social document and'for that reason it must gain a. high place in Jewish literature. "East of Eden," by I. .7. Sinner. (Putnam.)